It is known that higher alkanols and/or alkanoic acids are useful ingredients of pharmaceutical dosage forms, either in regular tablets or in the core material of sustained release coated products. Prolamines are also known as edible coatings of food stuffs and pharmaceutical preparations, either in tablets, or smaller particles. Said materials are often utilized with other ingredients to make up highly complex mixtures, but have never been reported in the combination described below. Surprisingly it was found that the combination of said 3 or 4 basic ingredients alone results in well reproducible, sustained action dosage forms, the drug-release of which can be easily controlled by varying the relative proportions of said constituents, so that release times from about 8 to 24 hours can be achieved.